Austin Bike Infrastructure Moves Forward

So around DFW, many cities are talking about accommodating bicycles and pedestrians. A few DFW cities are just starting to publish master bike plans and maybe stripe a lane or two. Austin is charging forward and building bold infrastructure. The Austin Master Bike Plan is good. Really good. So good that it won the very competitive State Planning Project Award.

From the Austin On Two Wheels Blog, they have a nice summary of the November infrastructure updates:

new sharrows on Lavaca Street to Martin Luther King Blvd

bike lanes on Martin Luther King Blvd

painted (green) bicycle lanes on Dean Keeton

Bike Box at the intersection of 38th Street and Speedway

In 2009 the City of Austin installed 20.7 miles of parking free bicycle facilities, more than doubling the 8.1 miles we installed in 2008. In the third quarter of 2009 alone we installed 8.5 miles of bicycle facilities exceeding the total for any previous year.

So naturally, if you’re reading this and you live in Denton, you might be asking “why isn’t this happening in Denton?”

Lack of shared vision and coordinated effort between council and planning staff.